2 People, 4 Cats and a Dream: Megan's Bridal Shower

So some of you may remember this post that mentions our friends Matt and Megan getting married. The wedding is in May and yesterday was the bridal shower.

This guy is a groomsman and I'm the matron of honor.

Matt's birthday dinner at On the Border after the tux fittings last weekend

We are very excited for both of them. I have to give a toast at the rehearsal dinner and I'm a little nervous. Luckily Randy and my brother offered to assist in writing it. Ha ha.

We had a beautiful day yesterday for a swanky shower at Megan's aunt's fabulous house. I made orange sugar cookies as favors, and they turned out great. I used this sugar cookie recipe, doubled it, and added about 3 tbsps of organic orange zest. Yes, I am zealous about my zest lately. The cookies turned out perfectly. A good thickness, fully cooked, but not too browned. I highly recommend this recipe even though it is kind of a pain to chill the dough and pop it in the fridge in between rolling it out and cutting, and putting the whole cookie tray in the freezer to firm up the cookies before baking. Yes, it is a lot of work, but totally worth dirtying 4 cookie sheets. You might not want to use this recipe is you're making hundreds of cookies, but I made about 30 and it worked out well.

I rolled out fondant that I made a couple of days in advance and let sit out, tightly wrapped in plastic wrap so it would lose it's marshmallow-y sheen. Then I used the same (clean) cookie cutters to cut out the fondant. Since the cookies bake up and out a tiny bit, the fondant was just slightly smaller than the cookies and fit on top really nicely. There's a ton of similar fondant recipes out there, but I've been using this one for years and it works out pretty well. It tastes better than store bought fondant too, and it was a subtle compliment to the orange in the cookies.

Let me tell you, after kneading the fondant, and rolling the cold cookie dough and the tough fondant, I probably didn't need to lift on Friday. It hurts just to type. My arms better be cut for this wedding.

If you click on the picture, you can make it bigger. I used royal icing to decorate the dresses and little cakes. The P's on the cakes are for Megan's new last name, not the Phillies.

Megan picked the most beautiful blue for our bridesmaids dresses. They are JCrew Evie dresses in silk chiffon Matisse Blue. This picture doesn't really do it justice, but it is like a bright, multi-faceted turquoise-y ocean blue. Gorgeous.

I tried to match the blue with ribbon from Michaels. It wasn't perfect, but pretty close.

I did not make this cake. The wonderful people at Cannons Custom Cakes and Bakery made it, based on this wedding cake I found on their website. Cannon's chocolate cake with vanilla buttercream frosting is Megan's favorite, and since she has to go with the cake maker that works with the venue for the wedding cake, we got her a Cannon's cake for the shower. I can't take credit for what it says, my co-worker, Chris, found it on a google search somewhere right before I called to order the cake. Chris is awesome.